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Domestic Drilling

Additional domestic drilling will reduce oil prices


  • Total voters
    57
I say we move away from oil all together, and focus on new energy sources.
 
Speculation accounts for about a third of the price of oil. If we get serious about drilling more and becoming energy independent, speculation will be that there will be more oil in the future. The price will drop.
 
Vote Maggots!
Absolutely not, until we reduce our dependence on oil, it won't matter what the source is, since the spike in price of crude is mostly controlled by speculaters on the commodities markets. The purpose of these markets were so businesses could plan their future costs and the assumption they would take delivery of them. Today's speculators use these markets as a casino - the never taking delivery.
 
I say we move away from oil all together, and focus on new energy sources.

Alternative energy investment is far too expensive and still has many unknowns. It will take a long time to even harness that energy and when it is I can only imagine how expensive it will be. We have enough oil for another 100+ years and need to depend on that as to not hurt families and businesses. An economic recession is a horrible time to begin a transfer in energy production.

Sure we can work on it, but lets make sure we are in a situation where it can be done.
 
I'm under the impression all the drilling we could muster would likely barely increase the amount of oil in our country by a double digit percentage and in a decade.
 
Alternative energy investment is far too expensive and still has many unknowns. It will take a long time to even harness that energy and when it is I can only imagine how expensive it will be. We have enough oil for another 100+ years and need to depend on that as to not hurt families and businesses. An economic recession is a horrible time to begin a transfer in energy production.

Sure we can work on it, but lets make sure we are in a situation where it can be done.

It's something we should strive for, space exploration was damn expensive, and there were many unknowns with that as well, but we got to the moon in under 10 years. I agree it might not be the best idea to do it in a recession, but it's something we need to start as soon as we are over this. You wanna bring America back to the forefront of technological expansion, you wanna take political, economic power away from the middle east? You invent a new energy source that everyone wants. I believe America can do it, we just need to commit to it, and not clamor for the last bits of oil left.
 
Speculation accounts for about a third of the price of oil.

This is true.

If we get serious about drilling more and becoming energy independent, speculation will be that there will be more oil in the future. The price will drop.

This is true, but not as you mean it. Increased domestic drilling would increase worldwide oil production a tiny amount(oil is a worldwide market) and would only do such effect 10 + years in the future, so increased domestic drilling would not reduce speculation and it's effect on oil prices. However, increased efforts on becoming energy independent by developing and using alternative fuels will, in time, have an actual impact.
 
Alternative energy investment is far too expensive and still has many unknowns. It will take a long time to even harness that energy and when it is I can only imagine how expensive it will be. We have enough oil for another 100+ years and need to depend on that as to not hurt families and businesses. An economic recession is a horrible time to begin a transfer in energy production.

Sure we can work on it, but lets make sure we are in a situation where it can be done.

We need to start at some point, starting in 100 years when we are out of oil is much worse prospect than starting now while we have time.
 
I was watching Modern Marvels a few weeks ago and they were talking about oil sands and sure enough I started seeing Chevron commercials for the same thing. According to Modern Marvels (and it could be a fib for all I know) over a 1/4 of our petroleum supply comes from this stuff. I think we should focus more on that and in the mean time make cars more energy efficient. I think within my lifetime at least most vehicles will be completely independent of oil, however much of our world is totally dependent on oil and this is a fact. We can reduce the dependence and eliminate non-NA dependence but it will never be totally eliminated until some other crazy breakthrough. Keep in mind our dependence on oil specifically is actually quite new compared to most other sources of energy, so who knows we might have another breakthrough someday.
 
It's something we should strive for, space exploration was damn expensive, and there were many unknowns with that as well, but we got to the moon in under 10 years. I agree it might not be the best idea to do it in a recession, but it's something we need to start as soon as we are over this. You wanna bring America back to the forefront of technological expansion, you wanna take political, economic power away from the middle east? You invent a new energy source that everyone wants. I believe America can do it, we just need to commit to it, and not clamor for the last bits of oil left.

It's not like we are just standing still and putting renewables on hold.
There's is just no reason not to use our own natural resources now, rather than depending on other countries. Drill baby Drill!

$60 Billion for Green in the Stimulus Bill: Where the Money Will Go : TreeHugger
The Stimulus Green by the Numbers: Where the Money Will Go
And here's what's got everyone so excited: (from NRDC)

• $6 billion for clean and safe water, creating more than 200,000 jobs
• $4.5 billion for greening federal buildings
• State energy grants, issued through the Treasury Department, that will fund renewable energy projects that are eligible for the available tax credits
• Funding for the state energy program, which includes important utility reforms and building code conditions
• $2.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy Research and Development
• $5 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program, creating approximately 90,000 jobs
• A multi-year extension of the renewable production tax credit
• A more effective tax credit for home efficiency upgrades
• $6 billion in loan guarantees for renewables, transmission and leading edge biofuels
• $2 billion for advanced batteries
• $9.3 billion for intercity rail, including high-speed rail
• $27.5 billion for highways (this large pot of money is not exclusively for highways, and states and cities must use this flexibility to invest in fuel-efficient public transportation)
• $8.4 billion for transit
• $1.5 billion in competitive grants for transportation investments (which could be used for public transportation)
Even some of the smaller numbers are encouraging: (from previous TreeHugger post)
* $125 million to restore trails and abandoned mines
* $146 million for trail maintenance at National Park Service sites
* $140 million for volcano monitoring systems
* $600 million for the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund environmental cleanup program
* $200 million to clean up leaking underground storage tanks
* $500 million for forest health and wildfire prevention
 
It could, over time, if refining capacity is increased and the amount of oil on the world market increases in proportion, to the increase in consumption.

But that would be a very different planet. Technically to reduce prices via domestic drilling, we'd have to see demand drop dramatically considering the amounts the US can actually bring to market.
 
I'm under the impression all the drilling we could muster would likely barely increase the amount of oil in our country by a double digit percentage and in a decade.

Indeed. I'm under this impression as well. Actually I think it's single digits. Plus compared to total global supply and total projected increase in demand, it takes a suspension of basic mathematical principles to argue that domestic can reduce oil prices. Well. Short of Chavez Style Nationalization.
 
Hey, nothing wrong with that, Chavez did it all to the legal dot. :cool:
 
Hey, nothing wrong with that, Chavez did it all to the legal dot. :cool:

Uh...depends how you define "wrong." Venezeula is facing a decline in oil production for a number of reasons directly tied to nationalization.

Anyways, I think the majority of people have this asinine notion that domestic driling can reduce oil prices largely because they don't understand how commodity markets work.
 
Uh...depends how you define "wrong." Venezeula is facing a decline in oil production for a number of reasons directly tied to nationalization.

Anyways, I think the majority of people have this asinine notion that domestic driling can reduce oil prices largely because they don't understand how commodity markets work.

I think it is as much that they do not understand the concept of a global economy. Reducing the demand in the US is not going to reduce the cost much, since the cost of oil is based on global demand.
 
Well yes, they had to gut the executives and many workers out of the national oil company. Details are sketchy but its a government oil company that has never been under the government until Chavez. I also want to know how theyre going to process that ultraheavy crude they've found without imperialist help. :lol:
 
We need to start at some point, starting in 100 years when we are out of oil is much worse prospect than starting now while we have time.

We should have started back during Reagan's era. I guarantee with a huge portion of the world wide oil demand gone we would have seen far more democratic and moderate regimes in the Middle East and a much more friendlier Russia. Iran would have gone like Bahrain at least a decade ago if we started a Manhatten like project to replace oil with renewable.
 
Vote Maggots!

Pointless to do and too environmentally risky. The Gov should lease more public land for solar energy.

It may reduce prices in the short run, but after about, I don't know, 3-5 years it will be right back to where it is now. Global demand + weak dollar = $$$ gas
 
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Damnit, I get orders on how to vote in the OP, but the choice isn't in the poll!

No "maggots" option.


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On a more serious note - Yes, in the short term. It would have to be a large increase to make much impact at all on prices, but it's still a better short-term option than hoping prices on alternate sources drop to be comparable.

In the long term, I think we would need to either have completely unrestricted drilling (yeah, right, like that'll happen) to keep the price down, or for all the promising and promised alternate sources to show fruit.
 
Pointless to do and too environmentally risky. The Gov should lease more public land for solar energy.

It may reduce prices in the short run, but after about, I don't know, 3-5 years it will be right back to where it is now. Global demand + weak dollar = $$$ gas

I largely agree. Unless the US has some magical way of quickly and sustainably boosting production and finding huge reserves, the time to market coupled with increase in global demand and the piss dollar will ensure the best can senario is we see gas prices rise slower. And this requires OPEC, Russia and Canada not to reduce their output to compenstate for increased USA production. OPEC, Russia and Canada are getting fat and happy off of $100 crude.
 
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